Well, was given some sad news today… will talk about it later… just know it’s sad. But good will come of it, I’m sure of that.
On a more lighter note, I finally figured out the network issues I’ve been having the last week or so. Our PIX was broadcasting that it had access to IPs that were on a disabled network interface, even the NIC was unplugged too, so it was causing all kinds of chaos. Fixed by removing the IPs from the other interfaces until I’m ready to roll live.
We’ve all had those days where we want to beat our computer because it’s miss-behaving. Now you can make the physical abuse mean something useful, at least with IBM ThinkPads at least.
But Metallica have finally decided to get a clue, and jumped into the times.
I’ve been contemplating playing with a little food photography recently, just some small little projects. I used to enjoy watching my uncle work. He’s had a large amount of work published in a variety of books. It was inspiring watching his creativity. So for some headstarts, I’ve been looking at some tips and tricks, and uncovered this little gem. Well laid out, and some nice ideas. They even have a walk through of a studio shoot, showing their tweaks, and modifications as they work. Quite interesting if food is something you want to look at.
I’ve not really got into the big “podcast” craze, I’ve not really had a huge amount of time to pay any attention. I do listen to “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell me” podcast, after seeing it once, and reading a brief comment on it by David, but I don’t listen too often. I usually end up downloading them as a batch, and listening to a handful. Certainly an interesting way to catch up with at least some news.
While I was catching up with some of my other feeds, Robert Scoble mentioned something about AmigoFish. It’s basically a directory of sorts for podcasts and videocasts. The reason it tweaked my interest was due to what Robert searched for… “Digital Photography”. So I may get addicted, we’ll have to see.
I was reading Robert Scoble’s blog earlier today, and he mentioned Moxi in a recent post. From the images on the Moxi website, it’s a beautifully designed digital cable interface. Much better than comcast which lacks some very basic features. Hell, I’d be happy if Time Warner would show Comcast how to do things. Time Warners interface is at least usable, comcast is just annoying (for example, you cannot skim through the guide while watching something as the guide fills the entire screen), and Moxi is beautiful. Thanks Robert, now I want it too, unfortunately they don’t even list Texas as an option in the “I want Moxi” list.
It’s gone 3:30am, and I’m sitting on yet another conference call, playing catch up with my feeds, when David’s latest entry entices me to read. He’s titled it “The Math Edification of David Seah”, it’s an interesting read, and strikes a few points home. Having moved to the US, all my qualifications seem a litle “off” compared to what everybody else is capable of, or has “the paper” to “prove” they could do something. For example, filling out an insurance form is interesting, especially when it asks for your education level. Back home, I finished college, compared to over here, I’m probably nowhere near college level. See, college level here is equivalent to university level there… So it has made me want to get back into some form of education to play catchup so to speak. But reading David’s article has reminded me of some things that make me think back, and realize. Math was one of my best subjects in the lower end of schools. I was excelled a year ahead of my class, why? I think it boiled down to two things:
At this point in my life, we had one teacher that covered everything from math, to english, to science. She was great (which reminds me, I might pop in and see how she is doing when I get home), encouraged my hard work, inspired me to learn more, and figured out what made me learn best, which was why I excelled to a year ahead of my class. That was when I enjoyed math.
Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy math, I just have a different perspective after going through college. Through high school, and college, I had two teachers for math. One covered statistics, probability, and that fun stuff, while the other covered Calculus, trig, and that fun stuff. The teacher that covered stats had a monotone voice, was dull to listen to, didn’t convey information entirely well, and happened to probably be one of the smartest teachers at the school… I learnt very little from him. My other teacher, very fun, bubbly personality, you could tell she enjoyed math, I learnt quite a bit from her.
As David points out, there are lots to make learning work well for people. Two that hit me well are “Relevance” and “Presentation”. I’ve come to realize that if I don’t find anything I can relate to, then I generally don’t get very into the subject. Take for example, languages. I studied German, and Spanish in highschool. Spanish only for a year, and German for 3. I cannot remember either of them, but now I wished I could at least remember some Spanish. After all, living in Texas, it would come in handy sometimes. Biology is another one I could never get into. I never did get why I was studying photosynthesis of a water plant for several weeks. I understood the theory, I understood the why, I could never remember any of the names of anything involved, nor could I find it relevant to what I want(ed) to do.
As for presentation, long stretches of text bore me, they don’t even enter into my brain if I cannot enjoy it. A hint to people doing manuals, instructions, and teaching, make the presentation fun, give the “student” something to remember. I cannot remember the pages upon pages of drawn out examples (using plain text) from Math at all, hell, I’d be lucky to remember half the symbols now.
With that being said, I really should try getting back into school to play “catch-up” and learn all the stuff I missed. Maybe I can find a new relevance now that I didn’t have before. Take a read of David’s blog, very interesting read.
Must be something in the air… This has been one hell of a week, actually two of them to be honest. Several late night (read that as “starting at 2am”) conference calls, new projects that are titled “more urgent than anything you’re doing”, shortly followed by similarly titled projects from the same people, and some weird network issues I’ve not yet been able to pin down. At least I’m not alone, Neill seems to have had a similar week.
On a side note, if you have a headache, google might help, wonder if they do free beer too.
Late Monday afternoon, we were notified by AT&T that our fiber connection was active, and they were ready to turn it over to us. Unfortunately because I’ve been snowed under with about 50 million projects, not much of an exaggeration honest, I hadn’t had time to rack mount the pix, and router. So late monday afternoon, I put the router up, and planned on doing the pix later that night. I arrive at the office at about 2100, and set to rearranging stuff to get the pix on. My other plan while there was to move all servers from one of the switches to a new 48 port switch, and leave internet connectivity on one switch, and everything else on the other two we had there. I didn’t think it’d take me more than about 45 minutes.
More horrors follow…
Earlier today, Microsoft outlines a roadmap for their own version of Salesforce (tm), titled “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live”, quite a mouthful, and not as catchy as “Salesforce”. Microsoft say they don’t plan on competing with Salesforce.com, however that’s not entirely what Steve Ballmer when he promised he’d give them “a run for their money”. Should be interesting. We use Salesforce in the office, and have extended its functionality using their built in tools to cover our helpdesk, and development environments too.